Writing Recommendations - Blog Posts

Tips to Making sure your Characters have Different Personalities - Authoring Advice🎭

You have spent time creating each of your characters and yet you may realize that one of your characters seem suspiciously similar to another one of your creations. I have a few tips to help with this.

Hobbies/ Likes/ Preferences:

Maybe both of your characters speak indistinguishably, perhaps they both have the same backgrounds, or both have tempers. A little thing like giving them different favorite foods can go a long way. 

You can put your characters in the same situation or similar ones and show the audience their different reactions. Maybe your characters seem the same but the farther you get to know them, the more you realize you were wrong. People can be the same way.

Backgrounds:

No one has the same past and life as another person (except maybe a sibling but there’s very little chance sisters and brothers are very alike). Parents are different, cultures are unalike, homes are contrasting. 

Try giving your characters separate lives. Experiences shape personalities. 

Make them hate each other:

As strange as it might seem, making the characters hate each other worked surprisingly well for me. 

Maybe, over the simplest thing, they fight and argue. They might have a dark past, or there may be other causes. But arguments (even if its funny to read) distract from the similarities and cause the differences to be more prominent.  

(And besides, it sets up a good enemies to friends subplot. But it might not work for every character. I do not advice on making to many enemy relationships.) 

Contrast the physical appearances:

It’s just a thought, but maybe making the to people look distinctly different can divert readers attention to compare the two. 

“If they look unalike, then they must be.”

Have them be bestest friends:

This is the opposite of another point I made but these are all suggestions, you do not have to follow any of them, but this may be something you want to try.

Just like opposites attract, people who have a lot in common also take interest in one another. Readers may think you made the pair similar on purpose. Like you were trying to have them have similar personalities. 

(BUT do not have them exactly alike, this is just being lazy and should never happen. There are very few exceptions, and they all involve clones.)

Try again:

A very likely reason why your characters are similar is because you didn’t work on them enough. You may need to sit back down at your desk (or floor, that’s my favorite place) and try again.

Redo them completely if you must, or just add on to what you have. But if nothing that I or another person has suggested worked, then your not ready. Eventually your characters will become a perfect mess that they were destined for.